finally allowed a WHO team to visit Wuhan, it exercised strict controls on the team’s access. In the end, the joint WHO-China report recommended taking a closer look at transmission through frozen food, a theory promoted by Beijing that broadens the scope of the investigation to look not only at China, but other countries including the United States. The Chinese Foreign Ministry praised China’s “open and transparent attitude.” In contrast, after the WHO released its findings, the U.S. and thirteen other nations issued a mandate for further investigation in which they voiced their “shared concerns” about the WHO study, in particular that scientists “lacked access” to crucial data and samples.26 The Biden Administration also tasked the U.S. intelligence community to make its best efforts to clarify the origins of this COVID-19. The report issued in response to this call, released as a declassified version in October 2021, unsurprisingly concluded that there remain unanswered questions, thereby setting the stage for the U.S. to call for more transparency than China will allow.27
I. Statecraft While the shift towards a more active foreign policy began in the later years of Hu Jintao’s tenure, China has become substantially more assertive in protecting what it sees as its core national interests since Xi became China’s leader in 2012. At the 2013 meeting of the government’s foreign policy leadership, Xi unveiled his new strategy of “Striving for Achievement.” As Kurt Campbell, who currently serves as the National Security Council Coordinator for the Indo-Pacific, noted in his book, The Pivot, this signaled a “distinctive new era in Chinese foreign policy.”28 These changes were driven by a combination of China’s gains in Asia’s balance of power, Xi’s concentration of control, and increased Chinese nationalism. Prior to the sea change in Americans’ views of China, U.S. administrations from Clinton through Obama imagined that they were integrating China into the American-led international economic and political order. Most of the American foreign policy establishment supported this undertaking. Yet according to today’s Washington consensus among both Democrats and Republicans, we were all wrong. 26 A dela Suliman, China hits back at Wuhan lab leak ‘conspiracy’ after Biden calls for Covid probe,” NBC News, May 27, 2021, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/china-hits-back-wuhan-lab-leak-conspiracy-afterbiden-calls-n1268704; The State Department, “Joint Statement on the WHO-Convened Covid-19 Origins Study,” March 30, 2021, https://www.state.gov/joint-statement-on-the-who-convened-covid-19-origins-study/. 27 “ Declassified Assessment of Covid-19 Origins,” Intelligence Community Assessment, October 29, 2021, https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/reports-publications/reports-publications-2021/item/2263-declassifiedassessment-on-covid-19-origins. 28 Kurt Campbell, The Pivot: The Future of American Statecraft in Asia (New York: Hachette Book Group, 2016), 233.
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The Great Diplomatic Rivalry: China vs the U.S.
